RAMALLAH, West Bank From
my living room window in Ramallah, a Palestinian city, I see the lights
of the Israeli settlement Pesagot on the opposite mountain. Across the
eastern road of my neighborhood, there is an Israeli military base, protecting
another settlement, Beit El. Had I wanted, as an Israeli Jew, born in West
Jerusalem, I could have moved at any moment to any of these settlements.
My Palestinian next-door neighbors in Ramallah, whose grandparents were
born in what is now Israel, could not even think of moving to, say, Tel
Aviv.

There is no way to understand the
current Palestinian uprising without examining the moral, economic and
social reality that Israeli settlement policy has created in the last 34
years.

Since the 1967 war, Israeli governments
 both Labor and Likud  have built settlements all over the occupied West
Bank and the small Gaza Strip, in the midst of Arab-Palestinian communities
that are centuries old. About 390,000 settlers now live in the West Bank
(including East Jerusalem) and in Gaza. The construction and development
of these outposts have essentially allowed Israel to create the infrastructure
of one state, stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. Israel's
governments have determined the overall character of these lands and the
fate of their people while the three million Palestinians who live there
and have paid taxes to Israel's Treasury could not vote for these governments.
Yet Israeli Jews in the settlements have the right to vote.

A network of large, well-maintained
roads now connects Israeli outposts  even the smallest and most remote
ones  to Israel proper. While Israelis can at any time move to the West
Bank or Gaza, Palestinians are not allowed to live legally in an Israeli
city or settlement, even if this settlement is built upon their family
land.

From the river to the sea, within
the contours of what is now de facto one state governed by Israel, live
some 4 million Palestinians. These people are classified in three different
categories: One million of them are Israeli citizens, who live within Israel's
1967 borders and who have the right to vote. Some 200,000 Palestinians
are residents of East Jerusalem, which was annexed to Israel's West Jerusalem
in 1967. They could become Israeli citizens, but most have refused, claiming
that they live in an occupied territory and they are a population discriminated
against by foreign rule.

Finally, there are the 2.8 million
Palestinians who live in the territories that Israel took over in 1967
and to which Israel has allocated very low sums, if any, for public infrastructure
improvements.

The result: Alongside the flourishing,
green and ever-expanding Israeli- Jewish outposts  well maintained by
Israeli policies and laws  is a Palestinian society subject to the rule
of military orders and restrictions, its dense communities (including those
in East Jerusalem) squeezed into small areas, served by miserably maintained
roads and an insufficient water supply system.

With the Oslo accords and the establishment
of self-rule under the Palestinian Authority, one hoped these immense inequalities
might be repaired or, at the very least, that the conditions of the West
Bank and Gaza would no longer be determined exclusively by an occupying
government. Yet during the last seven years, Israel continued to determine
major aspects of Palestinian life, like access to land and water and freedom
of movement. The Palestinian self-rule enclaves are encircled by vast Israeli-controlled
areas and cannot develop without Israeli permits for activities like building
water pipelines and new schools, upgrading a road or building a gas station.
To this day, the same military organ  the civil administration, an agent
of Israeli government policies in the West Bank  prohibits Palestinian
construction and planting and at the same time continues to develop Israeli
outposts in the very same territory.

Access to water is a glaring example
of inequality. Since 1967 Israel has controlled water resources and distribution
in the West Bank and Gaza. This has resulted in a striking difference in
per capita domestic consumption of water by Israelis and Palestinians 
an average of 280 liters per day versus 60 to 90 liters per day. No Israeli
settler needs to worry about running out of water, while thousands living
in Palestinian towns and villages have no running water for days at a stretch
during summer. When there is no running water in our building, I drive
to Jerusalem to fill my water bottles and to do my laundry. My neighbors
would need a permit to enter Jerusalem.

Any Israeli may travel freely at
any time  abroad and in the entire country. Any Palestinian needs an Israeli-
issued travel permit to move from Gaza to the West Bank, or from these
territories to Israel. Only a minority get such permits. And Israel also
determines who will pass through the external borders, which it controls.
My friends in Gaza missed a whole semester of studies at Bir Zeit University
near Ramallah because they did not receive travel permits on time. No Israeli
settler in Gaza would face this problem.

Israelis and Palestinians are in
a single geographic state controlled by one government, but they live under
two separate and unequal systems of rights and laws.

Palestinians wanted to believe that
this unequal state of affairs would end or diminish with the Oslo accords.
Instead, the number of settlers in the West Bank (not including East Jerusalem)
has doubled in the past decade  the years of the peace talks  and the
slow pace of Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank (and the total halt
during the years of the Barak government) has left Palestinians trapped
in small, scattered enclaves, making urban and rural development in Palestinian
areas nearly impossible.

The offer made by Ehud Barak at Camp
David kept intact the largest Israeli settlements and their connecting
roads. That offer would have split Palestinian territory into four cantons.
My acquaintances in a nearby refugee camp, just opposite the Beit El settlement,
sensed that there would be no real end to Israeli domination over their
lives and future.

Anger has accumulated in every Palestinian
heart  over the scarce water, over each demolished Palestinian house,
over the daily humiliation of waiting for a travel permit from an Israeli
officer. A small match can cause this anger to explode, and in this past
year, it has.

Amira Hass, the correspondent
for Haaretz in the Palestinian territories, is author of "Drinking the
Sea at Gaza.''